Saturday, April 19, 2008

19 Apr 2008 09:22 pm

Karl Clinton

The fusion of the Clinton campaign with the politics of Karl Rove and Republican neo-McCarthyism intensifies. You just can't help remembering the following sentence:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

She has become what she once opposed. And if she wins, it will be a victory for Rove and all he represents.

19 Apr 2008 08:50 pm

Who Else Does This?

Ambinder on Obama's rally in Philadelphia:

An Obama aide sized the crowd at about 40,000. It was probably was a little bit less, but a senior campaign official said it was the biggest the campaign had ever seen.

As usual, about 3,000 guests directly in front of Obama were sent through magnetometers and enclosed by metal barriers. Another 25,000 crowded Independence Park; some even listened from a good three thousand feet away, well behind Independence Hall.

I counted at least a hundred Philadelphia police officers. There were state troops. TSA personnel magging the crowd. A helicopter hovered over the square. The fire department set up a command post with extra medical supplies. It was some way to start Obama's final Pennsylvania push.

VandeHei, Harris, Stephanopulos and Gibson need to find some more kitchen sinks to throw. Do they have any septic tanks on hand?

(Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/Getty.)

19 Apr 2008 08:27 pm

"Jew-Baiting"

Attacks from within families are always more hurtful than those from the outside, and so I cannot pretend that Leon Wieseltier's latest personal attack on yours truly isn't painful in the extreme. To be called a "Jew-baiter" in the pages of a magazine I was once proud and honored to edit, and which I love and support, is an extremely wounding blow. It is also untrue and unfair.

Here's why Leon accused me of such a thing. I was outraged last week when Bill Kristol publicly called Obama a liar about his own Christian faith. The reason I was outraged is because accusing someone else's sincere profession of faith a fraud is about as nasty a tactic as one can imagine, about as brutal an attack on someone's integrity as can be devised. It will be part of the neocon right's attack on Obama this summer and fall. Obama's Christianity - modern, moderate, inclusive, non-fundamentalist, African-American - is terribly threatening to the Republican strategy of defining Christianity as exclusively fundamentalist and heartland, and rallying voters to the polls on those grounds. If the Democrat is obviously a faithful and observant Christian, and not a Christianist, this strategy might come undone, their polarization made less potent, and their cooptation of religion as a political tool less effective. So accusing Obama of being a Marxist, and a liar, and a spiritual fraud, is critical to the success of the strategy. I think this is gutter politics, disrespectful, uncivil and, in Kristol's case, a function of total cynicism and bad faith.

My phrase "a non-Christian manipulator of Christianity" is an attack on Kristol's cynicism, not his Jewishness. I agree wholeheartedly with Leon that, "if Kristol is wrong about Obama, it is not because Kristol is a Jew." It is because he is a cynic about faith, and a ruthless partisan indifferent to the truth when it cannot be harnessed to the wielding of power. My post was a protest against the manipulation of faith for partisan purposes, a theme that readers know I have been concerned with for a long time, and is the core argument of my recent book. It would apply to anyone outside a faith who has decided to use and manipulate another's faith for his own political purposes. "Non-Christian" would include atheist or Muslim or agnostic or, of course, Jewish. It would apply to my calling a professing Muslim a fraud or a practising Protestant a liar. It seems to me that in these areas of deeply personal conviction, a man's statement of his own faith - especially when it has been elaborated and explained by Obama in such detail - should be given the benefit of the doubt. And that should be particularly true for those who are not part of the same faith community. When you read the post (which TNR does not link to) this is clear. Here's the full context:

A non-Christian manipulator of Christianity is calling a Christian a liar about his own faith. That's where they've gone to already. And it's only the middle of April. What are they so scared of?

If I were "Jew-baiting," what would the "they" in that following sentence refer to: Jews? Please. The phrase is obviously a reference to Republicans, especially the most cynical, Rovian variety, which Kristol epitomizes.

Continue reading ""Jew-Baiting"" »

19 Apr 2008 04:24 pm

Dr. Death

The Supreme Court upheld the use of lethal injection this week, timed nicely with the Pope's visit. In 1990 Susan Lehman profiled Fred Leuchter, a designer of execution devices:

The Leuchter company's lethal-injection system, at $30,000, is the cheapest execution system the company sells. (Prices do not include installation.) The Leuchter electrocution system costs $35,000, and a Leuchter gallows would run about $85,000. More and more states are opting for Leuchter's $100,000 "execution trailer," which comes complete with a lethal-injection machine, a steel holding cell for the inmate, and separate areas for witnesses, chaplain, prison workers, and medical personnel. Leuchter's gas chambers cost nearly $200,000.

Despite Leuchter's personal preference, lethal injection is gaining popularity in states that allow capital punishment.

Continue reading "Dr. Death" »

19 Apr 2008 02:36 pm

The Undead God

An excerpt from John Haught's God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens:

I must confess that it has been disappointing for me to have witnessed the recent surge of interest in atheism. It’s not that my own livelihood, that of a theologian, is at stake—although the authors in question would fervently wish that it were so. Nor is it that the treatment of religion in these tracts consists mostly of breezy over-generalizations that leave out almost everything that theologians would want to highlight in their own contemporary discussion of God. Rather, the new atheism is simply unchallenging theologically. Its engagement with theology lies at about the same level of reflection on faith that one can find in contemporary creationist and fundamentalist literature.

Continue reading "The Undead God" »

19 Apr 2008 02:06 pm

Waste Not

Lisa Margonelli writes about needlessly lost energy.

19 Apr 2008 01:53 pm

Virgins For Sale

A grim story from India:

A roadside cluster of young girls, heavily made-up and dressed beautifully, attract the attention of travelers in passing "vehicles. The girls' maidenheads are offered for sale to the highest bidder.Nita (pic) is a pretty 13-year-old virgin who will follow her four sisters into the prostitution trade. One sister said Nita is particularly pretty and should command a high price. And Nita is willing, saying she doesn't like housework.Nita's family is one of 59 who populate the roadside collection, all members of the Bedia tribe."

19 Apr 2008 11:35 am

The View From Your Window

Barcelona, Spain, 1 pm.

19 Apr 2008 10:08 am

Why Americans Hate The Media

From James Fallows's 1996 article:

When ordinary citizens have a chance to pose questions to political leaders, they rarely ask about the game of politics. They want to know how the reality of politics will affect them--through taxes, programs, scholarship funds, wars. Journalists justify their intrusiveness and excesses by claiming that they are the public's representatives, asking the questions their fellow citizens would ask if they had the privilege of meeting with Presidents and senators. In fact they ask questions that only their fellow political professionals care about. And they often do so--as at the typical White House news conference--with a discourtesy and rancor that represent the public's views much less than they reflect the modern journalist's belief that being independent boils down to acting hostile.

Continue reading "Why Americans Hate The Media" »

19 Apr 2008 09:38 am

Picture Day

A page from cartoonist John Martz's redrawing of his mother's 1968 yearbook-- over 1000 portraits in all. The rest can be seen here.

Friday, April 18, 2008

18 Apr 2008 08:28 pm

What Fundamentalism Is

"Fundamentalism can be understood as a particular way of believing one's beliefs rather than referring to the actual content of one's beliefs.

It can be described as holding a belief system is such a way that it mutually excludes all other systems, rejecting other views in direct proportion to how much they differ from one's own. In contrast, the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing IN God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes ABOUT God (a distinction that fundamentalism is unable to maintain). This does not actually contradict the idea of orthodoxy but rather allow us to understand it in a new light...

This a/theism is not then some temporary place of uncertainty on the way to spiritual maturity, bur rather is something that operates within faith as a type of heat-inducing friction that prevents our liquid images of the divine from cooling and solidifying into idolatrous form," - Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God.

18 Apr 2008 08:06 pm

Why Blogging Is Different

A reader writes:

I think your latest post explains the blogger/reader relationship. When I read the New York Times or the Washington Post, I don't hear about the columnist's asthma. When I read The Dish, I think of my son who has asthma and appreciate the scholarship he gets every year to go to a special asthma camp.

When I read an Op/Ed on gay rights, I say "right on," but when I read your discussions from a real-life perspective, I think of my gay friend who told me that his brothers tried to "beat the gay out of him."

That said, it all really boils down to honesty. You and I disagree on many, many issues, but unlike the traditional media, you lay bare any biases you may have, which allows me, the reader, to do the same.

One can examine the polling data and watch the news, but the true pulse of the electorate is found in an open, honest conversation. For good or ill, the blogosphere is the new kitchen table, sans the horrid meat loaf that you pretend to like.

I actually do love meatloaf.

18 Apr 2008 06:31 pm

Mental Health Break II

Seeing this post, Dan recalls the following:

18 Apr 2008 06:23 pm

Eating Mud

Tyler Cowen highlights the following paragraphs from the NYT's coverage of the international food crisis:

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.”

Useful perspective as we obsess about polls in Pennsylvania.

18 Apr 2008 05:47 pm

Talking Taxes

Ezra thinks Democrats frame the tax debate badly:

This gets to a generalized problem in Democratic tax talk, which is that they're very unwilling to talk about taxes in terms of value. There are lots of government services which are actually a good deal for middle income families and should be sold as something that Americans would be wise to invest in. But rather than making a positive case around awesome stuff we're going to get, Democrats talk about taxes in complete isolation from the things that taxes buy, and begin with the premise that they're so odious and painful that they should only be levied on folks too rich to notice. It's not exactly the strongest argumentative ground.

But every tax takes money from people; until you concede that, you cannot argue that the benefits outweigh the costs. But I agree that a saner take on taxation would be less abstract.

18 Apr 2008 05:14 pm

BHO-Jay-Z Mash-Up

I asked for it.

18 Apr 2008 04:53 pm

Why Brooks Is Wrong

Greenwald is much more critical. I do believe that the Beltway has missed a lot of what's going on out there. But I'm no less insulated than my fellow hacks - unless you count being out there in the blogosphere, and getting the constant feedback from you guys.

18 Apr 2008 04:52 pm

Ayers Blogs

A few weeks ago, Bill Ayers posted on his personal blog about his episodic notoriety. Ben Smith notes that "[Ayers] contests the notion — central to the objection to him, as opposed to other people who were bad actors 35 years ago — that he he has "no regrets" about bombings — but he doesn't exactly contradict his 2001 line that 'I don't regret setting bombs.'"

18 Apr 2008 04:35 pm

The Ribbon Test

Poulos makes good points:

Flag lapel pins should not be mandatory for US politicians. They should not be mandatory for anyone. They should not be the product of social pressure. They should not be understood to reflect on anyone's resolution to care more, or call upon the public to acknowledge how much more they appear to care. There is nothing wrong with a flag lapel pin, although I would not wear one regularly unless I were in the flag lapel pin manufacturing business. But we have got to make ourselves admit that the lapel pin is a tacky little thing that is only ennobled by the flag put on it, and that the more patriotic work you want the flag to do, the more the flag is actually diminished by its puny size and the cheapness of the tin it's pressed upon.

Anyone who remembers the Seinfeld ribbon episode knows what he means. I have never worn a red ribbon. Some things you really don't have to wear on your sleeve.

18 Apr 2008 04:06 pm

Sexpelled

Ben Stein's next movie:

(Hat tip: Radley)

18 Apr 2008 04:01 pm

Bread And Water

The Economist offers a brief summary of the raising grain prices, while Philip Carter speculates on the coming water wars.

18 Apr 2008 03:41 pm

Face Of The Day

Police officers guard a cordon around houses in Comb Paddock in Westbury on Trym where a 19-year-old man was arrested under the Terrorism Act on April 18 2008 in Bristol, England. Avon and Somerset Police arrested the man after a covert operation and then undertook a controlled explosion after the raid on the suspect's home. Neighbours were evacuated and the man is being questioned at an undisclosed police station. By Matt Cardy/Getty Images.

18 Apr 2008 03:37 pm

Information vs Power

Judah Grunstein considers the conflict in Iraq between freedom of the press and having a successful occupation of a defeated country. There is no easy way out of this conundrum in this new media era. Winning wars has historically meant controlling information in occupied areas, engaging in propaganda where necessary, and crafting a message to help counter-insurgency. But when you "liberate" a country in the modern media age, these things become impossible. And when you are fighting a war for democracy, it becomes harder and harder to justify repressing the press in order to free it.

By the way, AP's Bilal Hussein is now free. Michelle Malkin called him a terrorist-sympathizer and enabler. Since his release, she has been uncharacteristically quiet. Can she provide the evidence she has for her claims that an AP journalist is an insurgent or direct us to the military sources who fed them to her? Is it too much to ask for the blogosphere to actually hold itself accountable for claims like these? Or the Pentagon for that matter?

18 Apr 2008 03:33 pm

A National Tightening?

Gallup shows Obama's lead decreasing.

18 Apr 2008 03:16 pm

Cheap DNA

A genome for a Franklin.

18 Apr 2008 03:01 pm

Can Obama Go In For The Kill?

It's part of the frustration on the part of his supporters and some scorn from the skeptics: in the debates and even in his advertizing, Obama doesn't seem to have a killer instinct. In the last debate, for example, on the one issue where he was all but invited to pile on in criticizing Clinton, on her Bosnia lies, he actually defended her. Clinton was not so restrained, in the same position. One viewer's take:

I asked my 82 year old mother, who hates politics with a passion because it is so negative, what she thought about the debate.  She said "Well, he's being a gentleman, of course.  Thank goodness, that is why I will vote for him."  She then said "It's about time someone behaved properly."  She then also asked me why I was making her watch the coverage.  "You know this is why I hate politics, I'm going to go play mahjong on the computer."

I just hope he doesn't go negative with McCain. A key to his appeal is his positive reason, which would be revealed as mere cunning if it did not apply to running against Republicans as well.

18 Apr 2008 02:43 pm

Historical Fiction

Publius restages the Lincoln-Douglas debates with Stephanopoulos and Gibson as moderators. A snippet:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do?

LINCOLN: Sure I do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But who loves America more?

LINCOLN: I’d prefer to get on with my opening statement George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: If your love for America were eight apples, how many apples would Senator Douglas’s love be?

18 Apr 2008 02:33 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee

"Hillary, I know what to expect from her, which is eight horrible years, but I'm not so sure she's still a Leninist. Her husband has made so much money in so many different capitalist ways that I actually think they've matured and become good Americans. [laughs] No, there's a paradoxical statement I've just made. In other words, I think the Clintons probably started out as far-leftist characters in their early years, but they've been around so long in the power structure and now, finally, they've been allowed to make so much money and they've circulated with the rich for so long that I think she's a safe bet. In fact, there's an argument to be made that she might be a safer bet than McCain in that regard," - far right talk show host, Michael Savage.

18 Apr 2008 02:17 pm

How Elitist Is Bruce Springsteen?

Slate wants to know:

18 Apr 2008 02:11 pm

Mystery Meat

Test-tube meat is getting closer to reality.

18 Apr 2008 02:01 pm

Fundamentalism and Culture, Ctd.

A reader makes a valid point:

To properly understand religious fundamentalism it is necessary to realize that "fundamentalism" has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with mindset. A quote on your site by George Orwell states "to see what is in front of nose needs a constant struggle", this is indeed very true, and the fundamentalist mindset is in the relinquishing of that struggle. One no longer needs to learn the basic realities of life and build from those as all of those assumptions have already been assigned to you. In allowing ones assumptions to be co-opted by a movement, religious or otherwise, it frees a person from having to understand the basis of ones decisions, and the responsibility held therein.  Fundamentalism is all about logic, not religion.  The same type of argument is easily made for completely irreligious things like Nazism or Communism. 

The people under these movements operate the same way, allowing ones basic assumptions of the world to be told to them, not formed by them.  Thus if the question is, what leads to the rise of fundamentalism, it is necessary to look at the type of person who wants to avoid the responsibility of understanding what is in front of ones nose.

For me, fundamentalism is not just a distortion of faith but a negation of it. Faith, in my view, should not be blind. It should have the widest eyes imaginable. Nothing that is true should stand in the way of faith, unless one has already conceded that one is believing in a lie. And so science is not to be feared but embraced. And historical scholarship is to be plumbed not ignored. And debate is to be welcomed, not policed. It is only through this process of doubt and questioning that real faith emerges.
 

18 Apr 2008 01:59 pm

Baracky!

18 Apr 2008 01:51 pm

Yes, We Can

The House music version from Beatport. Best yet, I'd say.

18 Apr 2008 01:47 pm

Stephanopoulos, Then And Now

A clip worth savoring.

18 Apr 2008 01:37 pm

Tightening In Pennsylvania?

The Rasmussen poll shows a very close race - closer since Bittergate and the Freak Show Debate. The poll of polls also shows tightening. I've said this for a long time, and you can look it up, but it seems to me that Clinton needs a double-digit win to avoid immense pressure to drop out. And in some ways, the nastiness of the campaign has both exhausted voters and disturbed super-delegates - which may lead to a collective decision to get this over with. We'll see.

18 Apr 2008 01:33 pm

The View From Your Window

Juneau, Alaska, 7.30 am.

18 Apr 2008 01:02 pm

Obama's Landing

David Brooks makes some shrewd points about the Obama candidacy today. Yes: he has had the shine scuffed off him. Yes: his capacity to be a post-partisan unifier would have been easier if he hadn't been forced into some rather classic primary warfare. Yes: he hasn't been as deft as he might have been on the cultural issues. Yes: he isn't the messiah. Yes: a blanket commitment to quit Iraq so quickly may well have to be adjusted in office, depending on events and developments we cannot yet know. And yes, his pivoting off NAFTA has not been pretty.

At the same time, his considerable strengths remain. He is the most persuasive and reasoned liberal on the national stage in a very long time. The inevitable initial swoon was always going to come down to earth at some point, and in some ways, it's better for the bloom to be swiped off the rose now rather than in September. Despite the caricature, many of us who want Obama to be the Democratic nominee are aware he doesn't walk on water, has a bit of an ego, has some iffy friends, and some ugly supporters. If the mountain were smooth, you couldn't climb it.

The great benefit of a McCain-Obama election will be the emergence of two flawed, human, but basically decent men who represent what I think of as the best and most sincere faces of their respective parties.

Continue reading "Obama's Landing" »

18 Apr 2008 12:45 pm

Now: Boren and Nunn

Those two heavy-weights of the Democratic foreign policy establishment have just endorsed Obama. The momentum among super-delegates is now reaching critical mass. And I don't think even Hugh Hewitt will be able to describe Nunn as a member of the "hard-left."

18 Apr 2008 12:31 pm

After The Surge

Jonathan Rauch:

What I think I’ve learned from the surge is that Bush and McCain are right. The surge’s gains are real and should not be thrown away. But Democrats, Lugar, and other skeptics are also right. Bush and McCain have not figured out a way to build on the surge.

This is not for want of strategic ideas. A succession of expert witnesses offered an assortment of suggestions in Senate hearings earlier this month. Here are the leading contenders.

• Instead of propping up the central government in Baghdad, federalize Iraq, decentralizing security and many other state functions.

• Instead of pleading with Iraqis to share power, lock the United Nations, the neighbors, and the Iraqis in a room and broker a deal backed by international muscle and regional support.

• Instead of seeking a national political accommodation, stitch together a patchwork of local cease-fires and enforce them with U.S. and other peacekeeping forces.

• Instead of unconditional engagement (the Bush-McCain approach) or unconditional disengagement (the Democrats’ preferred approach), go with conditional engagement, making continued U.S. support contingent on progress in Baghdad.

The first two options do indeed seem the most promising strategic options right now. "Conditional engagement," however, also means a credible threat - and intention - to leave Iraq if some kind of self-sustaining political arrangement - federalized or otherwise - is not reached. At some point, the McCain commitment to stay for a century if necessary and the Obama pledge to withdraw regardless will have to find a middle line. That's what the next president will have to figure out. The question is: who would best be able to do that, while bringing the country along with him? At this point, I honestly don't know. Except that Clinton would be the worst of the current three options.

18 Apr 2008 12:26 pm

The Power Of Obamanation

Tremble at the force, ABC News! Or calm down, Chuck Todd!

18 Apr 2008 12:11 pm

Reich Endorses Obama

The news is no surprise. The reasoning more apposite:

"I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It's the worst of all worlds. We have three terrible traditions that we've developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn't possibly believe and doesn't possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I've seen growing in Hillary's campaign. And I've come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can't in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past 20 years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical."

18 Apr 2008 12:02 pm

Breaking The News

Fallows comments on the debate:

I like and respect Stephanopoulos, and part of what I respect about him is the way he usually conducts his TV interviews. But I also remember dealing with him back in the early Clinton days, he in his role as campaign guy and me in my role as reporter. He understands thoroughly and in his bones what is wrong with the kind of mindless, substance-free gotcha questioning he and Gibson wasted their time on last night. I know he understands it because I've heard him shame journalists who were applying the same tactics to Bill Clinton back in the day. What was he thinking? What kind of pressure had been applied to him?[...]

Continue reading "Breaking The News" »

18 Apr 2008 11:54 am

Moore Award Nominee

"'I want to punch Clinton the person, not Clinton the woman.'

These are not separable identities.

I see this notion everywhere—that some violent urge toward Hillary Clinton isn't aimed at "Clinton the woman," but at some other magical version of her where her sex and gender have been erased, presumably along with the entire cultural context of womanhood. The semantic contortions invoked to extricate "Hillary Clinton the person" from "Hillary Clinton the woman" are an attempt to do an end-run around that context, to create a space outside of reality, where Hillary Clinton exists in some sexless, genderless limbo and people can talk about wanting to injure that non-woman without all the icky negative images injuring actual women conjures for most decent people," - Melissa McEwan.

18 Apr 2008 11:30 am

The Pope In Washington

Yesterday's homily in full. The best coverage is here:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

"Peace be with you!" (Jn 20:19). With these, the first words of the Risen Lord to his disciples, I greet all of you in the joy of this Easter season. Before all else, I thank God for the blessing of being in your midst. I am particularly grateful to Archbishop Wuerl for his kind words of welcome.

Our Mass today brings the Church in the United States back to its roots in nearby Maryland, and commemorates the bicentennial of the first chapter of its remarkable growth - the division by my predecessor, Pope Pius VII, of the original Diocese of Baltimore and the establishment of the Dioceses of Boston, Bardstown (now Louisville), New York and Philadelphia. Two hundred years later, the Church in America can rightfully praise the accomplishment of past generations in bringing together widely differing immigrant groups within the unity of the Catholic faith and in a common commitment to the spread of the Gospel.

Continue reading "The Pope In Washington" »

18 Apr 2008 11:16 am

Quote For The Day

"I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but my will has been broken. I’ve realised that covering Mrs Clinton's campaign without explicitly stating that it has turned into a win-at-all-costs operation fueled by phony outrage, hypocritical proclamations and absurd notions of who is electable and who is not is an exercise in deliberate deception, and I can't do that. Perhaps I am weaker than my colleagues, but a certain fatigue sets in when trying to sort through it all.

This is no longer a campaign based on ideas. It is a campaign focused on tearing down Mr Obama. We all know that’s her only shot at the nomination. I’m tired of pretending otherwise," - the Economist's blogger.

The Clinton campaign has become a force of pure negativism, a black hole of no. Whatever she would do as president, we now know one important thing: it ill only always be about calculation. She has nothing left.

18 Apr 2008 10:48 am

Mental Health Break

Watching a water-balloon explode in very slow-mo, courtesy of the latest in cameras. Hat tip: Wired.

18 Apr 2008 10:44 am

Meanwhile ...

... the president keeps sinking:

The poll of polls gives him 28 percent.

18 Apr 2008 10:33 am

Yes, He Has A Sense Of Humor

Romney explains his loss:

4. I took a bad fall at a campaign rally and broke my hair.
3. I wanted to finally take off that dark suit and tie, and kick back in a light-colored suit and tie.
2. Once my wife Ann realized I couldn't win, my fundraising dried up.
1. There was a miscalculation in our theory: "As Utah goes, so goes the nation.”

He missed one: He believed Hugh Hewitt had a grip on reality.

18 Apr 2008 09:53 am

Conservative Fascism

Hilzoy contemplates the meaning of senior officials approving torture:

One of the great dangers of the Bush administration is that it will permanently alter our sense of what is possible or acceptable. You can see an analog of this when people say things like: Bush won't be able to do X, or: he will have to do Y, where these statements do not refer to physical necessity or impossibility. (E.g., if memory serves, when the surge began, some Republicans said: if it doesn't work, Bush will have to withdraw.) The sense in which people who say such things think that Bush "has to" or "can't" do something or other is just that there are certain things we do not believe that any President would do, and others we think he must do. There are lines we assume he would never cross.

But this administration does not recognize the existence of any such lines. They do not "have to" withdraw just because none of their plans have worked, the army is breaking, and the war has next to no popular support. They would "have to" withdraw only if someone put a gun to their collective heads and forced them to. They do not "have to" obey the law or the Constitution: they will only if they are literally compelled to. Likewise, they do not "have to" respect even the most basic principles of decency and humanity, even when obligated to do so by US law and treaties we have signed, which are, according to the Constitution, the law of the land. Neither moral suasion nor legal obligation seem to matter to them. The only sense in which they "have to" do anything is the sense involving physical necessity.

But shouldn't we be discussing Barack Obama's ties to domestic terrorism? I mean: where's the sense of perspective here?

18 Apr 2008 09:50 am

An Unjust War

Parsing the Pope on Iraq. When you add the authorization of torture to the moral calculus and the empowerment of some of the most evil elements in Tehran, the picture gets even worse.